 Print Article
|
They slept on mattresses or towels placed on the concrete floor, next to bicycles and the cleaning equipment they used to do their work. They cooked on a gas stove tucked away in a tiny corner of the centre that served as their makeshift kitchen.
For failing to provide acceptable housing for these foreign workers, cleaning company Chang Seng Services was fined $20,000 last month, the highest fine ever meted out for the offence.
Prior to this, the largest fine was $7,500, handed out last year to cleaning firm Maint-Kleen for housing four foreign workers in a Waterloo Street public toilet.
Maint-Kleen was also the first employer prosecuted by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) for housing its workers in substandard lodgings.
Chang Seng Services was caught in May after the ministry received a tip-off.
The company was among 1,052 employers caught by the ministry between January and November.
Of the 1,052, 20 firms were fined between $200 and $2,000. The remaining 1,031 were issued with warning letters.
The ministry was not able to provide figures for the same period last year.
It could only say that 116 employers had been caught in the first five months of last year, of whom 18 were fined a total of $30,700.
The ministry discovered this year's errant employers during routine checks on 661 premises across the island, of which 281 were found to be providing inappropriate housing.
Some of the premises were factories that had been illegally converted into dormitories.
The number of employers exceeded the number of premises checked because some places housed workers hired by many different companies.
The 1,370 foreign workers found living in the overcrowded quarters have since been relocated to approved accommodation by their employers, the MOM said in a statement yesterday.
Overcrowding poses risks to the workers' health and safety and to public health and fire safety too, it added.
Employers who fail to provide proper accommodation for their foreign workers are in breach of the conditions for the workers' work permits.
They may be fined up to $5,000 and/or jailed up to six months for each breach. It may also affect the companies' future applications for work permits.
Chang Seng Services' director, Mr Frankie Tan, said he left the workers in the bin centre because he had no luck renting a place for them nearby.
The bin centre was convenient as it was within walking distance of the hawker centre that the workers had to start cleaning every day at about 2am, when getting cheap transport was difficult, he added.
He said the bin centre had not been used for storing rubbish for a long time, and had instead been used by his company to store its cleaning equipment.
'We wouldn't have asked them to live in a rubbish dump. We're not so cruel,' he said.
After the bin centre was shut down, the five workers were moved to a flat in Tiong Bahru and cycled to work.
Four of them returned home after their work permits expired last month.
Mr Tan has applied to the Housing Board for permission to convert a utility centre in Redhill Close into proper living quarters for his cleaners.
Mr Nio Chee Sheng, a 51-year-old retiree who lives in Block 89 next to the bin centre, was one of the few residents who realised that the workers lived there.
He had spoken to them and described the workers as a quiet bunch who were cooperative and would even help residents discard heavy furniture from their flats.
'I've seen the inside of the bin centre when they lived there,' he told The Straits Times yesterday.
'It was clean, but there were many rats in the area.'
